Greetings ICMag members,
I've formed a collective with a couple buddies and we are experiencing problems. I'm new to growing and my main partner has about 5 years of growing experience. In my brief time researching I've come to the conclusion that my partner doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does. I want to maximize our yield and reduce our costs. Any help would be appreciated.
SCROG Grow-
Room - 11x12x10
Lights - 9 HPS 1000w (on a flip, explanation below)
Medium - 1/2 vermifire 1/2 readygro (7 gal smartpots)
Strand - OG Legends Kush (what i'm told the strand is)
Nutes - 3 part Flora system
Suppliments - sm 90, calmag, superthrive, Liquid Kool Bloom, Floralicious Plus, Rapid Start, FloraNectar
AirCon - 32,000 BTU mini split (temp set at 78, high of 80, low of 65, RH max 20% low --[not sure what -- means, guessing 0?])
CO2 Burner/Generator Natural Gas - 900 during day, off at night
Water - Tap (30ppm?)
There are also 5 oscillating fans mounted on the walls as well as a huge carbon filter with an 11" industrial fan hanging from the ceiling. The room is NOT sealed completely. There are small gaps around the door and there is a hole in the ceiling (8" in diameter) where all the cords for the lights run. The ballasts are outside of the room on top of the ceilings exterior.
The lights are connected to a flip. So even though there are 9 lights, only 5 will be on at a time. They flip every hour for the 12h flowering period. So for example:
First hour:
XOX
OOO
XOX
Second Hour:
OXO
XOX
OXO
O= Light is on.
You can see that the lights switch from a diamond to the 4 corners while the middle light never turns off. My partner thought this would save costs and reduce heat issues while still allowing him to hit his "1lb a light" yield. This was my first red flag that he doesn't understand what he's doing.
We've had one harvest from this room and it came out to about 4lbs from 27 plants I believe. Now we have 20 plants in there and it's looking like it will be about 4 to 4.5lbs, probably less, based on me looking at the canopy and guessing.
The plants were stressed heavily after we started flowering. The leaves were a bright yellow and my partner thought it was caused by heat stress from the lights. The temps in the room vary from 65 to 80 degrees. We have no way of knowing how long the temps stay at the coldest or the hottest. We just have a min/max that we can check on the gauge. The lights are a good 2 to 3 feet above the canopy. We dimmed the lights down to 750w (on the ballasts) due to the 'heat stress' guess by my partner.
We water every other day by hand. So we watered yesterday and tomorrow we will go in and water. He usually waters anywhere from 5 seconds to 15 seconds per plant. He lifts the pot and based on the weight decides how much water each plant gets. The water is pumped from the rez we make each time we come in. Right now the plants in this room are getting 8 seconds max of water. I don't know how much this is since his 8 second count could be different than mine, but I've measured a liter out before and it was about 5 seconds (I think).
The nutrient mix is based on a formula he got from the person who taught him. The last rez I made for this room (2 feedings ago) was something like this:
50 gal
50 ml SM-90 (We put SM-90 in every rez we make first, every time)
300 ml FloraMicro
250 ml FloraGRO
700 ml FloraBloom
180 ml calmag
50 ml floraplus
Ph'd with 2 oz of up (Brings ph up to 6.8ish)
This rez would be considered a 'light' nute mix compared to past rezes. He's come to believe that we might have been over nuting (I agree) so he's scaled back on some things. Which things, I'm not sure as I don't normally feed this room. But he's definitely cut back on adding supplements. One time he admitted to me that he added Liquid Kool Bloom and the powder form in the same rez (not on this current crop, though). When I looked them up online as per the directions I wtf'd when I saw they shouldn't be used in conjunction. This rez was used for other rooms too, so 50 gals weren't made to only water 20 plants for 8 seconds each.
This room is on the 5th? maybe 6th week of flowering. I don't have the exact date when we began a 12/12 cycle. We hit them with ph'd water for 2 or 3 feedings and then started with a rez like the one mentioned above. The ph'd water helped a ton. The new growth looks green and healthy. The buds are looking pretty good too with plenty of white hairs growing. I'll take some pictures the next time I go in to see how they are responding to the nutrients. Here are some pictures of the room taken on the 17th. They were taken when the lights were off from my phone. (see attachments)
My thoughts:
We don't water correctly. We don't water enough, and we water too often. His 8-15 second count is all the water the pots will get. I've suggested watering about 1/4 of his count and let the water sink in for 10 minutes and then go back and water the rest. He thinks this is a bad idea and wants to continue to water how he's been watering. As far as I know, he doesn't water till he sees runoff and if the plant hasn't eaten all the water in the pot by the following feeding he just hits it with less.
Our flip idea doesn't work. 5 lights will never produce 10lbs (in this horizontal grow). He claims he can produce 10lbs from 9 lights, and has done so in a room this size, but admits he's never done this flip idea before. I suggested we get all 9 lights turned on and we will for the next crop. Still need an electrician to fix our box (allow more amps).
I think his nute 'formula' is garbage. He trusts the guy who taught him and just takes his word for gospel. I think we should drastically cut back on nuting and slowly work our way up with supplements. Will the Lucas Formula be a good starting point with the soil medium we use (vermifire/readygro)?
I think we can change our lighting regimen to reduce costs and decrease use of our bulbs. I've suggested the GLR and he told me 'it won't work with sativas'. Okay buddy. I've also told him about the reduced light schedule for flowering and he seemed receptive so we might end up doing that on the next round.
If you read over this and anything jumped out at you as 'wtf?' please respond or if you have any questions about what we're doing I'll gladly fill in the details. I'm trying to research as much as possible and come up with improvements to our system but my partner is hard headed and not a scientifically minded individual. He's set in his ways and it's difficult for me, who's new to growing, to tell him what he's been doing is incorrect. I'd welcome any advice, tips, or criticism. We need to figure this shit out asap.
Thank you for taking the time to review all of this information!
I've formed a collective with a couple buddies and we are experiencing problems. I'm new to growing and my main partner has about 5 years of growing experience. In my brief time researching I've come to the conclusion that my partner doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does. I want to maximize our yield and reduce our costs. Any help would be appreciated.
SCROG Grow-
Room - 11x12x10
Lights - 9 HPS 1000w (on a flip, explanation below)
Medium - 1/2 vermifire 1/2 readygro (7 gal smartpots)
Strand - OG Legends Kush (what i'm told the strand is)
Nutes - 3 part Flora system
Suppliments - sm 90, calmag, superthrive, Liquid Kool Bloom, Floralicious Plus, Rapid Start, FloraNectar
AirCon - 32,000 BTU mini split (temp set at 78, high of 80, low of 65, RH max 20% low --[not sure what -- means, guessing 0?])
CO2 Burner/Generator Natural Gas - 900 during day, off at night
Water - Tap (30ppm?)
There are also 5 oscillating fans mounted on the walls as well as a huge carbon filter with an 11" industrial fan hanging from the ceiling. The room is NOT sealed completely. There are small gaps around the door and there is a hole in the ceiling (8" in diameter) where all the cords for the lights run. The ballasts are outside of the room on top of the ceilings exterior.
The lights are connected to a flip. So even though there are 9 lights, only 5 will be on at a time. They flip every hour for the 12h flowering period. So for example:
First hour:
XOX
OOO
XOX
Second Hour:
OXO
XOX
OXO
O= Light is on.
You can see that the lights switch from a diamond to the 4 corners while the middle light never turns off. My partner thought this would save costs and reduce heat issues while still allowing him to hit his "1lb a light" yield. This was my first red flag that he doesn't understand what he's doing.
We've had one harvest from this room and it came out to about 4lbs from 27 plants I believe. Now we have 20 plants in there and it's looking like it will be about 4 to 4.5lbs, probably less, based on me looking at the canopy and guessing.
The plants were stressed heavily after we started flowering. The leaves were a bright yellow and my partner thought it was caused by heat stress from the lights. The temps in the room vary from 65 to 80 degrees. We have no way of knowing how long the temps stay at the coldest or the hottest. We just have a min/max that we can check on the gauge. The lights are a good 2 to 3 feet above the canopy. We dimmed the lights down to 750w (on the ballasts) due to the 'heat stress' guess by my partner.
We water every other day by hand. So we watered yesterday and tomorrow we will go in and water. He usually waters anywhere from 5 seconds to 15 seconds per plant. He lifts the pot and based on the weight decides how much water each plant gets. The water is pumped from the rez we make each time we come in. Right now the plants in this room are getting 8 seconds max of water. I don't know how much this is since his 8 second count could be different than mine, but I've measured a liter out before and it was about 5 seconds (I think).
The nutrient mix is based on a formula he got from the person who taught him. The last rez I made for this room (2 feedings ago) was something like this:
50 gal
50 ml SM-90 (We put SM-90 in every rez we make first, every time)
300 ml FloraMicro
250 ml FloraGRO
700 ml FloraBloom
180 ml calmag
50 ml floraplus
Ph'd with 2 oz of up (Brings ph up to 6.8ish)
This rez would be considered a 'light' nute mix compared to past rezes. He's come to believe that we might have been over nuting (I agree) so he's scaled back on some things. Which things, I'm not sure as I don't normally feed this room. But he's definitely cut back on adding supplements. One time he admitted to me that he added Liquid Kool Bloom and the powder form in the same rez (not on this current crop, though). When I looked them up online as per the directions I wtf'd when I saw they shouldn't be used in conjunction. This rez was used for other rooms too, so 50 gals weren't made to only water 20 plants for 8 seconds each.
This room is on the 5th? maybe 6th week of flowering. I don't have the exact date when we began a 12/12 cycle. We hit them with ph'd water for 2 or 3 feedings and then started with a rez like the one mentioned above. The ph'd water helped a ton. The new growth looks green and healthy. The buds are looking pretty good too with plenty of white hairs growing. I'll take some pictures the next time I go in to see how they are responding to the nutrients. Here are some pictures of the room taken on the 17th. They were taken when the lights were off from my phone. (see attachments)
My thoughts:
We don't water correctly. We don't water enough, and we water too often. His 8-15 second count is all the water the pots will get. I've suggested watering about 1/4 of his count and let the water sink in for 10 minutes and then go back and water the rest. He thinks this is a bad idea and wants to continue to water how he's been watering. As far as I know, he doesn't water till he sees runoff and if the plant hasn't eaten all the water in the pot by the following feeding he just hits it with less.
Our flip idea doesn't work. 5 lights will never produce 10lbs (in this horizontal grow). He claims he can produce 10lbs from 9 lights, and has done so in a room this size, but admits he's never done this flip idea before. I suggested we get all 9 lights turned on and we will for the next crop. Still need an electrician to fix our box (allow more amps).
I think his nute 'formula' is garbage. He trusts the guy who taught him and just takes his word for gospel. I think we should drastically cut back on nuting and slowly work our way up with supplements. Will the Lucas Formula be a good starting point with the soil medium we use (vermifire/readygro)?
I think we can change our lighting regimen to reduce costs and decrease use of our bulbs. I've suggested the GLR and he told me 'it won't work with sativas'. Okay buddy. I've also told him about the reduced light schedule for flowering and he seemed receptive so we might end up doing that on the next round.
If you read over this and anything jumped out at you as 'wtf?' please respond or if you have any questions about what we're doing I'll gladly fill in the details. I'm trying to research as much as possible and come up with improvements to our system but my partner is hard headed and not a scientifically minded individual. He's set in his ways and it's difficult for me, who's new to growing, to tell him what he's been doing is incorrect. I'd welcome any advice, tips, or criticism. We need to figure this shit out asap.
Thank you for taking the time to review all of this information!
